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Authorial Politics

In the breaks in his writing schedule, David has promised to stop by and chat for a while!
Re: Authorial Politics
Post by namelessfly   » Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:08 am

namelessfly

I'd agree that Legislaturists Haven is a reasonable extrapolation of the US wellfare state. Weber doesn't give us any info on who owns productive assets, but it seems plausible that "wealthy" people still own the farms and factories. The problem is that they are burdenned with a workforce that is too uneducated and unmotivated to be productive and onerous tax rates to pay for the wellfare.

I find it amazing and amusing that we now have a President who has spent most of his working life as a "community organizer". The Democratic party itself refers the activities of its community organziaing as to as "Poverty Pimping."

saintonge wrote:
rofwh wrote:
namelessfly wrote:I got hammerred hard for starting a thread suggesting that the basic premise of Weber's Honorverse is Capitalist Manticore vs Socialist Haven. People were particularly incensed when I pointed out Manticore's voter eligibility criteria which requires you to be a tax payer rather than a wellfare case. People focused on Manticore's universal availability of prolong as proof that it was a socialist utopia that had remained economicly viable only because of the revenue from the wormhole junction. While I'll drop the issue in the HONORVERSE forum, I'll reiterate the point here.

....


And this is a good example of how differing points of view actually do see and interpret things quite differently. I never saw Haven as a communist entity. It was more like a situation where the power elite ran things and kept the population in bread and circuses until the revolution swept them out and what was a truly totalitarian, quasi-Nazi government took over.


The situation in Haven under the Legaslaturists was, according to David Weber (who just might possibly know something about it), modeled on the U.S. welfare & mediocrity state continuing till it mortally wounded its society.

And they were overthrown by...the military. This was a violent version of Portugal's Carnation Revolution, where the military got sick of the wars in Africa and took advantage of a power vacuum brought about by the fall (literally) of Salazar. And then a democratically elected Socialist government came to power. How Iberian.

Eric Flint certainly is more of a lefty than a righty. If label we must.


Eric is a Trotskyist, and he doesn't try to conceal that. Just ask him, someday. He was for many years a political activist with the Socialist Workers Party, iirc.


But what he really is is a romantic. The blinded trooper's wife's story in the Belisarius books is one outstanding example of that. And an Assiti shard during a wedding, of all things? There was never so much pairing up in any science fiction book as there is in the 1632 books (forget the Gazette's--that stuff is gossip). And look how he (not DW, I bet) has Hugh and Berry end up in Torch. Is he the Nora Roberts of Science Fiction?


Eric has also stated, that he puts romance into his novels and stories because its a normal part of human life. People are constantly settling down with one another. It's unrealistic to expect it not to happen in future societies.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by Damonby   » Mon Nov 22, 2010 6:57 pm

Damonby
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Posts: 125
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:12 am
Location: Sacramento, Ca

[/quote]
For the poor people of the South during The War Between the States their was no economic reason to fight if anything they would have been better off getting rid of the slaves because then they could get jobs etc. but the Southern elite said that this war is about freedom and repelling Yankee aggression and they got volunteers to fight. I think that the same thing will happen here in the league.[/quote]

I know of two members of my family who couldn't pay the buy out price ($500) for service in the CSA and got "drafted". Since they waited until the last possible day to be mustered in I would guess that they weren't all that interested in fighting in the first place.
I don't believe that they were all that unusual. Someday perhaps someone will compile the mustering in records for CSA members and see how many of them joined the day before their nineteenth birthday. I would think it would be a fair number of people from late 1861 on.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by Tenshinai   » Sat Nov 27, 2010 10:33 pm

Tenshinai
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Posts: 2893
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:34 pm
Location: Sweden

namelessfly wrote:Fascism and Nazism are both variations of Socialism. While they allow the "means of production" to remain in the hands of the capitalists, the state rather than the free market dictates how these productive assets are managed.


Please DO try to support that claim. Do a thorough comparison between nazism and socialism and show exactly where they overlap.
Then i want you to do the same with one or two liberal and conservative ideologies.

Or you could just simply read up a bit on political theory by yourself rather than assume that a claim made in a book is automatically correct just because the author is cool.

You want realism? USAs neocons are in some camps scary close to nazis. I dont think they would like you calling them pseudo-commies?
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by namelessfly   » Tue Nov 30, 2010 5:16 pm

namelessfly

I actually did a research paper back in college on the British Union of Facists, so I got a chance to learn something about the underlying economic philosphy. Socialism and wealth redistribution was an intergral part of Hitler's fascist ideology. Much of the antisemitism in Fascist ideology was motivated by resentment of the fact that Jews were generally more affluent than most Germans. Other aspects of the German fascist ideology that called for terriorial conquest were motivated by presumptions about population growth and resource depletion that are shared by modern environmentalists.

Your equating of NeoCons with Nazis suggests that you don't have a good understanding of either political philosophy. Would you care to elaborate on what policy positions Neocons have in common with Nazis?

Your screen name is interesting, suggesting that you either live in Japan or are of Japanese ancestry. Japan is one of the few nations on Earth that effectively prohibits immigration to ensure racial purity. Just ask the Koreans about that.

Tenshinai wrote:
namelessfly wrote:Fascism and Nazism are both variations of Socialism. While they allow the "means of production" to remain in the hands of the capitalists, the state rather than the free market dictates how these productive assets are managed.


Please DO try to support that claim. Do a thorough comparison between nazism and socialism and show exactly where they overlap.
Then i want you to do the same with one or two liberal and conservative ideologies.

Or you could just simply read up a bit on political theory by yourself rather than assume that a claim made in a book is automatically correct just because the author is cool.

You want realism? USAs neocons are in some camps scary close to nazis. I dont think they would like you calling them pseudo-commies?


I suggest a little light reading so that you at least have a clue as to what the fundamental precepts of Nazism and Facism are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi

Obviously; conservatives are the Burgeois that Nazis loathe almost as much as communists.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by Donnachaidh   » Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:15 pm

Donnachaidh
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Posts: 1018
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 3:11 pm

Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but using they're heritage/ancestor to attack them is another. Don't do it.

Also you left out the fact that a large segment of Americans under the age of 30 watch various animes and read manga. Those people might also choose a username that is of Japanese origin. In any case, the only thing that personal attacks do is polarize people and create arguments.

namelessfly wrote:Your screen name is interesting, suggesting that you either live in Japan or are of Japanese ancestry. Japan is one of the few nations on Earth that effectively prohibits immigration to ensure racial purity. Just ask the Koreans about that.
_____________________________________________________
"Sometimes I wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by namelessfly   » Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:53 pm

namelessfly

Point well taken.

I really wasn't trying to use perceived race/ancestry as a personal attack. Merely to point out that the Japanese have policies that are similar to the perceived policies that NeoCons are demonized for. Interestingly; NeoCons actually favor liberal immigration policies. It is the PALEOCONS who favor severe restrictions on immigration do to the fear that the cultural heritage of non European immigrants would make them less appreciative of democracy rather than authoritariansm.

To be blunt, given the difficulties that Europe is now experiencing with assimilating (or not assimilating) Arab and African immigrants, Japan's policy of not allowign immigration seems very smart. The Australians have also restricted immigration in recent years.

I'm sorry if I allowed my frustration with the idiotic argument that NeoCons are as morally repugnent as Nazis to be equally offensive. It would be easier to take if the people making the claim has the slightest clue as to what the policy positions of the two political groups actually were. About the only commonality between Nazis and NeoCons is that both favor a limited but still generous wellfare state.

Donnachaidh wrote:Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but using they're heritage/ancestor to attack them is another. Don't do it.

Also you left out the fact that a large segment of Americans under the age of 30 watch various animes and read manga. Those people might also choose a username that is of Japanese origin. In any case, the only thing that personal attacks do is polarize people and create arguments.

namelessfly wrote:Your screen name is interesting, suggesting that you either live in Japan or are of Japanese ancestry. Japan is one of the few nations on Earth that effectively prohibits immigration to ensure racial purity. Just ask the Koreans about that.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by Tenshinai   » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:20 pm

Tenshinai
Admiral

Posts: 2893
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:34 pm
Location: Sweden

namelessfly wrote:Your screen name is interesting, suggesting that you either live in Japan or are of Japanese ancestry. Japan is one of the few nations on Earth that effectively prohibits immigration to ensure racial purity. Just ask the Koreans about that.


Perhaps you should start by learning to read then?
Slightly below username where it says "Location: Sweden"?
You know, the country who took in more refugees from the USA invasion of Iraq, in ONE SINGLE TOWN, than the whole of USA.

And just to make sure you understand, im also of about as total Swedish ancestry as is possible, able to trace some family branches back to 13th century. With one known "immigrant"(an enemy soldier getting injured and captured and ends up marrying locally and then staying here afterwards) in the family.

I picked my username here as sarcastically as usual.

namelessfly wrote:I actually did a research paper back in college on the British Union of Facists, so I got a chance to learn something about the underlying economic philosphy. Socialism and wealth redistribution was an intergral part of Hitler's fascist ideology. Much of the antisemitism in Fascist ideology was motivated by resentment of the fact that Jews were generally more affluent than most Germans. Other aspects of the German fascist ideology that called for terriorial conquest were motivated by presumptions about population growth and resource depletion that are shared by modern environmentalists.

Lol...
By that kind of argumentation, the moonrace was won thanks to USA employing communism(funny thing that USA had a strict plan economy style while USSR had a bunch of competing design bureaus fighting viciously to get every contract)...

Nazism has zero direct relation to socialism.
Nazism puts huge focus on family, community and national values, socialism does rather the opposite at family and national levels while to some degree promotes it at community level.

Nazism´s focus on wealth is basically "grab anything you can get" and "only us superior aryans should own big companies instead of those annoying jews".
The nazi economy was fiercely competitive and any redistribution was more a result than an aim, and wasnt very major either. One of the main reasons for the German economy being ineffective for so long in WWII was exactly because they DIDNT centralise it. Up until 1943, USA was far more "socialist" than Germany was.
Then Speer got the orders to effectivise the economy, and he did, turning it radically closer to a planned economy, something that was strongly opposed by many of the industrialist elites who were VERY influential overall.

That jews were more affluent was part of villifiying them far more than it was a reason for the nazis to hate them. Other way around, but it helped drag the general public with them by pointing this and other things out.

In case you havent noticed yet, WWII was my entry into interest in history. I´ve spent about 25 years reading about it. I´ve forgotten more facts about WWII than most people ever knew. Although i specialise more on technical and tactical parts, there is so much interesting stuff in the politics that i´ve spent plenty enough time on that part as well.

I can easily expand on the above i´ve written enough to cover a 300 page book, but i´d rather not, i type fast, but it still takes time.

namelessfly wrote:Your equating of NeoCons with Nazis suggests that you don't have a good understanding of either political philosophy. Would you care to elaborate on what policy positions Neocons have in common with Nazis?

Lol...
How many similiarities do you want me to list?
The way religion is part of politics, check.
Using aggressive diplomacy to force other nations to do as you wish being considered normal, check.
Using military force to gain control of raw materials is considered ok, check.
Fiddling with the economy to make it look better shortterm.
The extremely close links between government and the military industry.
The heavy corruption(like the oilrig accident? the corruption that allowed that to happen is unlikely to have grown up during most other presidencies, just as one example).

Actually, the original connection i did was when i saw GWB campaigning in 1999, because his speeches reminded me so much of Hitlers, the "strong, great leader".
I stated then, "-if he´s elected, there will be war".

namelessfly wrote:I'm sorry if I allowed my frustration with the idiotic argument that NeoCons are as morally repugnent as Nazis to be equally offensive.

But i never claimed them to be "morally repugnent" alone or in comparison to anything. I said that they were a far closer match to nazis than any socialists that i know of.

The neocons tried to and to some extent succeeded in imposing their will on the world and in that, they´re VERY similar to the nazis, except the latter was much less successful.
Conquest by arms is bloodier initially, but conquest by economy has much more farreaching effects and doesnt allow a country to resist.
Thats the downside of a "peaceful world".

Of course, China is now doing a tiny little part of that back at USA, and USA is already screaming bloody murder about it. Well, be happy China is being nicer than USA has been to much of the world.

namelessfly wrote:About the only commonality between Nazis and NeoCons is that both favor a limited but still generous wellfare state.

Lol... ROFLMAO... "Generous wellfare state"??? What kind of literature have you been reading!?!?!?
Nazis supporting a wellfare state?
About the only thing they had that counts as "wellfare" is their maternal benefits. Which helped produce the German baby boom of the mid-late 30s.

As you seem to be american you might count their focus on education as "wellfare" but thats rather delusional.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by namelessfly   » Sat Dec 04, 2010 2:34 pm

namelessfly

Most users don't have a location listed, so I don't make a habit of looking for them.

Living in Sweeden certainly explains a lot about your political point of view. Sweeden is one of the few European countries that eagerly cooperated with the Nazis. Event he Swiss managed to maintain some neutrality and they were completely surrounded by the axis powers. Certainly makes any attempt at debate futile.

Just one example, if the US invaded Iraq for the oil, why are China and Russia getting most of the oil contracts? Why aren't we just pumping all the oil and shipping it home without paying for it.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by Tenshinai   » Wed Dec 08, 2010 8:28 pm

Tenshinai
Admiral

Posts: 2893
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:34 pm
Location: Sweden

namelessfly wrote:Most users don't have a location listed, so I don't make a habit of looking for them.

Living in Sweeden certainly explains a lot about your political point of view. Sweeden is one of the few European countries that eagerly cooperated with the Nazis. Event he Swiss managed to maintain some neutrality and they were completely surrounded by the axis powers. Certainly makes any attempt at debate futile.

Just one example, if the US invaded Iraq for the oil, why are China and Russia getting most of the oil contracts? Why aren't we just pumping all the oil and shipping it home without paying for it.

Again you show off ignorance of history.

"eagerly cooperated"?
After WWI, Sweden cut back far far too much on the military, and when the first attempts at rearming were taken in 1935 as a direct reaction to worries about Hitlergermany, it was found that those who had decent military hardware in production, wasnt selling.
The most important area, fighters, the first solution tried was to buy from USA, P-35s...

Only a handful of those arrived before USA unilaterally cancelled the order on the basis of needing the planes yourself, AND even worse also cancelling the order for highperformance aircraft engines, something that Sweden at the time had zero production of. It took until 1943 to reverse engineer some imported engines, update it to current power and start serial production.

When war was getting closer, the options looked at were buying I-16s from USSR(but they didnt want to sell bombers as well so those negotiations ran aground ), supporting the Finnish development of the VL Myrsky (but they were not close to finished and wasnt exactly the most experienced developers, so delays were totally possible(and did happen)), buying the Zero from Japan(their offer was by far the best and even included offering production licenses for both plane and engines, but actual delivery would be a nightmare, so it fell through)... In the end, a bunch of Italian Re.2000 were purchased, and a smaller batch of Fiat Cr.12 were added to the order after a vicar did a serious fund drive.

Both above aircraft were obsolescent or even obsolete even when delivered. Not until 1944 did Sweden manage to have enough even of an airforce to have a reasonable chance of successfully even resisting an invasion attempt by Germany.

Did you know that Germany had a panzer division specifically deployed to Norway for the sole reason of being ready to spearhead an attack into Sweden?
In 1943, such an attack was for a time almost realised.

Biggest deception of the war, was probably when the war started and the Swedish prime minister went out and said "Vår beredskap är god"/"Our readiness is good", which sure was correct in some areas, but militarily it was a load of bull.
But the Germans bought it.
And we know that because of Swedish espionage against Germany. Espionage that for one thing included tapping into the German communications with its troops in Norway, which gave troop movement updates regularly for ALL German fronts. That information ended up in London within days. And part of why that COULD happen was because Swedish mathematician A. Beurling in 1940 cracked the code of the German Geheimschreiber, similar to the "Enigma" but bigger, heavier and more complex.
And how to break it, that was another piece of information that went to the British. And those using this coder, was the Luftwaffe and the German navy among with the diplomatic corp.

And Swedish cooperation with the Brits was close enough that when Bismarck left the Baltic sea, less than two hours after it was spotted by a Swedish destroyer, the location, speed and direction had been fasttracked to London. Similar information going between UK and USA, officially close allies, usually took days.

Do you know anything at all about the Swedish support of the Norwegian resistance? Isnt it strange how Norwegians just "happened" to end up close to the border, with equipment, food, weapons and explosives and just "got lost", some while officially in internment camps.

And Sweden training and equipping over 10000 Norwegians as "police" for "postwar stability", oh yeah, military training and equipment, very "policey". And some of these belongs to the above category of "oops, got lost near the border".

And if the German surrender in Europe had happened 2 weeks later, the Swedish assault against German troops in Denmark would have happened as planned.

Oh and somewhat amusingly, because Germany was convinced that Sweden was a strong silent supporter and really thought Swedish military was as strong as it tried to look like, Sweden actually managed to threaten Germany away from some things a few times. One of those was that any form of "scorched earth" in Denmark or Norway would be "unacceptable". Espionage later showed that actually made the Germans be careful at least there...
Its also the reason Wallenberg could do what he did.

Oh yeah, back to military preparedness...
In 1939, if all artillery started firing constantly, ammunition would run out in a couple of minutes, antiaircraft weapons would last about twice as long (buying nitrates to produce ammunition had become near impossible after 1937).

Oh, and during the Finnish winter war, Sweden gave away 1/3 of its military rifles for the defence of Finland.
A small part of that was another attempt to make it look like there was a lot more where those came from.

Just about the only part of the military that had some strength was the navy, and that mostly due to some ships built for WWI never getting scrapped. And those were basically miniature pocket battleships. Deadly for an enemy of light ships, but easy targets for German heavy cruisers or REAL pocket battleships, or worse still for aircraft...

So, guess why Sweden had the 4th biggest airforce in the world in the early 1950s? Because that was the result of the arming that started in 1935, and was originally meant as defence from either USSR or Germany.
And why do you think until the last decade Sweden has almost fanatically maintained domestic military industry? Because the wish to not get stuck again like the late 30s.
Offical politics would have been very different if Sweden had had at least what it had in 1945 by 1939 instead.

Oh and BTW, did you know that Sweden didnt accept new contracts from Germany once the war started? In 1939, Germany got well over 1/3 of its iron from Sweden, a few years later, that number was down to around 1/10.
All contracts in existence were honored, but new ones were avoided as far possible ( which was one of the main reasons Germany almost invaded ). Officially with the "greatest regrets".
And there just happened to be the occasional delays in deliveries...


Swedish actual cooperation with Germany, was nonexistent.
There was lots of talk to make sure the Germans were suitably impressed... And then the actual cooperation, was with the British. But that was kept totally unofficial to avoid risking a German invasion, at least until military preparedness could be raised enough to have a chance to repulse such an invasion.


Please, in the future, KNOW something about the things you talk about.
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Re: Authorial Politics
Post by namelessfly   » Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:36 pm

namelessfly

A very eloquent, persuasive and informative post. I had a good appreciation of Sweenden's efforts to independantly maintain a robust military after WW-II including building some rather impressive fighter aircraft, the much maligned S-tank (really a damn good tank destroyer) and the new Gotlend class (nail me on spelling) submarines that have a sterling cycle engine running on fuel and liquid oxygen giving them near nuclear tactical endurance and near electric noise signature. I'm also acutely aware of the fact that Sweeden has (or at least had) a robust civil defense program that people in the US should be demanding. Sweeden is also on a rather long list of countries that could develope nuclear weapons quite rapidly if they chose to do so but this isn't a concern to the US because they aren't belligerant as Saddam was.

Your information about how Sweeden supported Findland and insurgents in Norway totally surprised me. To be blunt, my wife is of Sweedish ancestry and her family tells jokes about the wars between Sweeden and Norway. (It seems that the Norwegians had the Swededs outnumberred and surrounded and were throwing bombs at them. The Swedes were lighting the bombs and throwing them back).

Now that I've conceded some of your valid points and have had to reasess my attitude towards Sweeden as a result, would it be possible for you to at least question the propganda that the US invaded Iraq to steal the oil?

Tenshinai wrote:
namelessfly wrote:Most users don't have a location listed, so I don't make a habit of looking for them.

Living in Sweeden certainly explains a lot about your political point of view. Sweeden is one of the few European countries that eagerly cooperated with the Nazis. Event he Swiss managed to maintain some neutrality and they were completely surrounded by the axis powers. Certainly makes any attempt at debate futile.

Just one example, if the US invaded Iraq for the oil, why are China and Russia getting most of the oil contracts? Why aren't we just pumping all the oil and shipping it home without paying for it.

Again you show off ignorance of history.

"eagerly cooperated"?
After WWI, Sweden cut back far far too much on the military, and when the first attempts at rearming were taken in 1935 as a direct reaction to worries about Hitlergermany, it was found that those who had decent military hardware in production, wasnt selling.
The most important area, fighters, the first solution tried was to buy from USA, P-35s...

Only a handful of those arrived before USA unilaterally cancelled the order on the basis of needing the planes yourself, AND even worse also cancelling the order for highperformance aircraft engines, something that Sweden at the time had zero production of. It took until 1943 to reverse engineer some imported engines, update it to current power and start serial production.

When war was getting closer, the options looked at were buying I-16s from USSR(but they didnt want to sell bombers as well so those negotiations ran aground ), supporting the Finnish development of the VL Myrsky (but they were not close to finished and wasnt exactly the most experienced developers, so delays were totally possible(and did happen)), buying the Zero from Japan(their offer was by far the best and even included offering production licenses for both plane and engines, but actual delivery would be a nightmare, so it fell through)... In the end, a bunch of Italian Re.2000 were purchased, and a smaller batch of Fiat Cr.12 were added to the order after a vicar did a serious fund drive.

Both above aircraft were obsolescent or even obsolete even when delivered. Not until 1944 did Sweden manage to have enough even of an airforce to have a reasonable chance of successfully even resisting an invasion attempt by Germany.

Did you know that Germany had a panzer division specifically deployed to Norway for the sole reason of being ready to spearhead an attack into Sweden?
In 1943, such an attack was for a time almost realised.

Biggest deception of the war, was probably when the war started and the Swedish prime minister went out and said "Vår beredskap är god"/"Our readiness is good", which sure was correct in some areas, but militarily it was a load of bull.
But the Germans bought it.
And we know that because of Swedish espionage against Germany. Espionage that for one thing included tapping into the German communications with its troops in Norway, which gave troop movement updates regularly for ALL German fronts. That information ended up in London within days. And part of why that COULD happen was because Swedish mathematician A. Beurling in 1940 cracked the code of the German Geheimschreiber, similar to the "Enigma" but bigger, heavier and more complex.
And how to break it, that was another piece of information that went to the British. And those using this coder, was the Luftwaffe and the German navy among with the diplomatic corp.

And Swedish cooperation with the Brits was close enough that when Bismarck left the Baltic sea, less than two hours after it was spotted by a Swedish destroyer, the location, speed and direction had been fasttracked to London. Similar information going between UK and USA, officially close allies, usually took days.

Do you know anything at all about the Swedish support of the Norwegian resistance? Isnt it strange how Norwegians just "happened" to end up close to the border, with equipment, food, weapons and explosives and just "got lost", some while officially in internment camps.

And Sweden training and equipping over 10000 Norwegians as "police" for "postwar stability", oh yeah, military training and equipment, very "policey". And some of these belongs to the above category of "oops, got lost near the border".

And if the German surrender in Europe had happened 2 weeks later, the Swedish assault against German troops in Denmark would have happened as planned.

Oh and somewhat amusingly, because Germany was convinced that Sweden was a strong silent supporter and really thought Swedish military was as strong as it tried to look like, Sweden actually managed to threaten Germany away from some things a few times. One of those was that any form of "scorched earth" in Denmark or Norway would be "unacceptable". Espionage later showed that actually made the Germans be careful at least there...
Its also the reason Wallenberg could do what he did.

Oh yeah, back to military preparedness...
In 1939, if all artillery started firing constantly, ammunition would run out in a couple of minutes, antiaircraft weapons would last about twice as long (buying nitrates to produce ammunition had become near impossible after 1937).

Oh, and during the Finnish winter war, Sweden gave away 1/3 of its military rifles for the defence of Finland.
A small part of that was another attempt to make it look like there was a lot more where those came from.

Just about the only part of the military that had some strength was the navy, and that mostly due to some ships built for WWI never getting scrapped. And those were basically miniature pocket battleships. Deadly for an enemy of light ships, but easy targets for German heavy cruisers or REAL pocket battleships, or worse still for aircraft...

So, guess why Sweden had the 4th biggest airforce in the world in the early 1950s? Because that was the result of the arming that started in 1935, and was originally meant as defence from either USSR or Germany.
And why do you think until the last decade Sweden has almost fanatically maintained domestic military industry? Because the wish to not get stuck again like the late 30s.
Offical politics would have been very different if Sweden had had at least what it had in 1945 by 1939 instead.

Oh and BTW, did you know that Sweden didnt accept new contracts from Germany once the war started? In 1939, Germany got well over 1/3 of its iron from Sweden, a few years later, that number was down to around 1/10.
All contracts in existence were honored, but new ones were avoided as far possible ( which was one of the main reasons Germany almost invaded ). Officially with the "greatest regrets".
And there just happened to be the occasional delays in deliveries...


Swedish actual cooperation with Germany, was nonexistent.
There was lots of talk to make sure the Germans were suitably impressed... And then the actual cooperation, was with the British. But that was kept totally unofficial to avoid risking a German invasion, at least until military preparedness could be raised enough to have a chance to repulse such an invasion.


Please, in the future, KNOW something about the things you talk about.
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